Devotionals

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Last weekend I spent a little time doing a very overdue job. The weeds in our veggie garden had began to take over. Slackness and rainfall do not make good bedfellows. Following the Jesus inspired tradition of seeing spiritual significance in earthly business, I offer these seven conclusions from an exercise of weeding.

1. Pulling out weeds is not fun. It's time-consuming, painstaking, painful and generally hard work. So too is facing the spiritual and emotional weeds in our life, that the Bible calls sin. They hang on, sometimes with deep roots into our soul, and they seem to scream when removed

2. For weeks I have been convincing myself that the weeds did not matter - "They are just keeping the ground warm during the winter months". Of course, when I faced the weeds they were much worse than I thought, and at a number of points the plants and veggies I thought were growing amongst the weeds had actually been overrun and choked by the weeds. Like weeds, we convince ourselves that our little weaknesses and foolishness are not as bad as we think and may even have positive benefits. But maybe we should stop kidding ourselves.

3. When the weeds get overgrown it is so easy to destroy all the garden when you remove them. In my little exercise I lost perfectly good spring onions and leeks which came out with the weeds. In our lives sin's late removal tends to cause way more damage than we might expect.

4. In spite of the pain, removing the weeds is worth the effort. To my surprise the exercise revealed carrots and lettuces that I had forgotten were growing there. Sometimes in life when the shackles of sin are removed they reveal hidden fruit.

5. The only way to really weed a garden is on your knees. Only when you kneel in the soil are you close enough to see what is really going on and what needs to be removed. On our knees in prayer is the only place we can have the courage to face our failings and bleakness. Through prayer the impossible can be achieved. On our knees in humility we can face the truth that so many of our problems are self-seeded.

6. It's so easy to do nothing and pretend the problem will go away. It won't - it will only get worse unless we face our sins and their need for removal.

7. Of course the final lesson after weeding a garden is that the soil needs to be filled with good plants or the old weeds will come straight back. The spiritual lesson is also obvious, that repentance must be followed by the sowing of good deeds, which will one day reap a rich harvest.

..... I will judge you, each one according to his ways, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent! Turn away from all your offences; then sin will not be your downfall." (Ezekiel 18: 30)

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